Refusal: Black Women Workers and Emancipatory Struggle

Recasting American history from the vantage point of Black women workers, whose struggles for justice point the way to emancipation for all of us.

In a series of narrative chapters—in an accessible social history vein—highlighting specific moments of Black women’s refusal, from slavery to #Black Lives Matter, Refusals argues that Black women workers’ refusals can guide us all toward emancipation.

Ervin looks at unions, protests, kitchen-table discussions, laundries, and all arenas of life to find examples of how Black women workers’ refusals constituted core challenges to racial capitalism and structured Black feminism. The book brings out the breadth of struggles Black women have been engaged in, and thinks of “work” very broadly—from union, civil rights, cultural work and consumption, housework, environmental justice, AIDS activism, more—that Black women workers have been engaged in.